15,000 Nm³/h VPSA Oxygen Plant for a Leading Cast Iron Producer by PKU Pioneer

In July 2026, PKU Pioneer successfully commissioned a 15,000 Nm³/h Vacuum Pressure Swing Adsorption (VPSA) oxygen station for a major cast iron producer in North China. The plant, delivering oxygen at 80% purity for oxygen-enriched blast furnace melting, achieved its first-start-up success.

Powered by PKU Pioneer’s four-bed radial-flow VPSA technology, the plant achieves power consumption as low as 0.28 ± 0.02 kWh/Nm³ on a 100% oxygen basis. This performance places the station among the advanced large-scale VPSA oxygen solutions for foundry blast furnace applications.

Doubling Capacity Within the Existing Plant

The customer is a leading cast iron producer whose products are widely used in wind power, nuclear power, high-end equipment and defense applications. As the company upgrades its high-purity iron-based material production, its existing VPSA oxygen station could no longer provide sufficient capacity for two blast furnaces operating under highly oxygen-enriched conditions.

Instead of building a new oxygen station, the customer chose to rebuild the existing facility and double its single-unit capacity to 15,000 Nm³/h within the same site. This approach not only minimizes the additional footprint and investment, but also provides the oxygen capacity needed for current production while leaving room for future upgrades to intelligent blast furnace operations.

Designed Around the Customer’s Priorities

During the technology selection process, the customer visited several PKU Pioneer VPSA oxygen plants that had been operating reliably for years, evaluating several oxygen supply options including cryogenic air separation, conventional five-bed axial-flow VPSA and four-bed radial-flow VPSA.

The key concern was not simply the one-time capital investment. The customer needed a solution that could:

• Keep specific power consumption below 0.30 kWh/Nm³
• Maintain stable oxygen pressure at larger production capacity
• Reuse the existing plant with no production downtime
• Deliver long adsorbent life and control long-term spare-parts costs

PKU Pioneer designed the VPSA system around these requirements.

Oxygen is supplied directly through the oxygen-enrichment interface upstream of the oxygen compressor, eliminating the need for a medium-pressure oxygen compressor. The old plant building, control room and power distribution room were also reorganized to optimize the equipment layout and minimize shutdown time during the retrofit.

By maximizing the reuse of the old facilities, the project reduced civil construction costs by approximately 20%–30%.

Efficient Retrofit and Smooth Commissioning

The retrofit was carried out during the hot and rainy summer in North China. To ensure the project schedule, PKU Pioneer and the customer developed an off-peak work schedule and prefabrication plan in advance. Equipment removal and installation were carried out in stages, with phased demolition and phased handover for installation, while the critical path was dynamically adjusted by PKU Pioneer based on on-site surveys.

The oxygen pipeline was purged and pressurized in stages, with each step jointly signed off by the customer’s quality team and PKU Pioneer’s commissioning engineers. PKU Pioneer team also remained on site to complete system integration and interface commissioning, ensuring that the integrated test run passed on the first attempt.

The result was a successful first start-up, with oxygen purity, pressure stability and specific power consumption all performing better than the design targets.

Lower Oxygen Costs and Faster Payback

Calculated on an industry-comparable basis, the plant produces 15,000 Nm³/h of oxygen at 80% purity, equivalent to 12,000 Nm³/h of 100% oxygen. Total plant power consumption is approximately 3,500 kWh/h.

Based on an average electricity price of RMB 0.65/kWh, the cost of 100% oxygen is around RMB 0.23/Nm³. Compared with the customer’s existing cryogenic air separation plant, the VPSA system reduces oxygen costs by approximately 50%.

The benefits extend beyond oxygen production costs. Based on PKU Pioneer’s experience with similar VPSA projects for blast furnace applications, higher oxygen enrichment can increase smelting intensity while reducing coke consumption. As a result, the combined annual savings from reduced liquid oxygen purchases and lower coke consumption could reach tens of millions of RMB. Furthermore, given the reuse of old plant facilities and the doubling of production capacity, the payback period is expected to be within one year.